INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FRANZ LISZT 2011
FRANZ LISZT: MIRROR OF A EUROPEAN SOCIETY IN EVOLUTION
UNIVERSITIES OF RENNES, DIJON AND STRASBOURG, FRANCE
20 - 27 SEPTEMBER 2011
CALL FOR PAPERS
DEADLINE: 1 JULY 2010
As part of the bicentenary celebrations of Liszt’s birth, the universities of Rennes, Dijon and Strasbourg organize a tribute to the most representative European composer of the nineteenth century. Three symposia in three different cities will give new insight into three different aspects of Liszt’s artistic, literary and political personality and seek to (re)define his status in the cultural world of his time.
Congress dates:
Rennes - Liszt: A Musician in Society
Tuesday 20 – Wednesday 21 September 2011
Dijon - Liszt: Readings and Writings
Friday 23 – Saturday 24 September 2011
Strasbourg - 19th-century Topoi and the Music of Liszt
Monday 26 – Tuesday 27 September 2011
Honorary Committee
- Detlef Altenburg (Germany)
- Serge Gut (France)
- Leslie Howard (GB)
- Charles Rosen (USA)
- Alan Walker (USA)
Organizing Committee
- Florence Fix (University of Burgundy)
- Márta Grabócz (University of Strasbourg)
- Laurence Le Diagon-Jacquin (University of Rennes II)
- Georges Zaragoza (University of Burgundy)
Congress N°1 - University of Rennes 2 (September 20-21, 2011)
Scientific Committee:
- Rossana Dalmonte (Institute Franz Liszt, Italy)
- James Deaville (Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada)
- Zsuzsanna Domokos (Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Center, Hungary)
- Cornelia Szabó-Knotik (Institute for Analysis, Theory and History of Music, Vienna, Austria)
- Michael Saffle (Virginia Tech.,USA)
LISZT, A MUSICIAN IN SOCIETY
Liszt was a polyglot and a cosmopolitan citizen travelling throughout Europe and expressing his ideas on the progress of nations, political systems and social change... Liszt, a European in a Europe under construction is the main focus of this symposium which sets out to analyse the connections between his music and the religious, political and aesthetic transformations of his time (in continuity with the colloquium in Bellagio ). In a political and religious sense he did indeed meet the important people of his world, the monarchs and princes, the revolutionaries, the pope and the clerics at odds with the dogma of the day. In addition to considerations about Liszt himself—not only as a virtuoso piano player, composer, teacher and also as a man of his society—an examination of the characteristics of his music as it has evolved over time (for instance at anniversaries or on stage and on screen) might prove a promising approach. The relations between Liszt’s music and society (religion, politics, history...) represent a whole socio-musicological field of research for the symposium in Rennes.
Congress N°2 University of Burgundy, September 23-24, 2011
Scientific Committee:
- Jacqueline Bellas (University of Toulouse)
- Maria Eckhardt (Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Center,Hungary)
- Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger (Switzerland)
- Claude Knepper (CNRS, Paris)
- Danièle Pistone (Paris IV – Sorbonne)
- Alban Ramaut (University of Saint-Etienne)
LISZT, READINGS AND WRITINGS
As a music, literary and art critic, and a reader and an observer of his time, Liszt also wrote many letters. These are widely studied today and indeed one of the main avenues of research of this symposium will be to examine the limits and mechanisms of Liszt’s writing, as a musician who also marked his contemporaries by what he wrote.
Liszt is also the subject matter of various writings, biographies and novels alike. As a character of fiction, of romanticized biographies, of imaginings that transpose him into other realms representing him, say, as a painter, Liszt is at the heart of a literary activity that sees him as both subject matter and acting subject. The self-portrait that emanates from his correspondence is also an interesting composition and the concepts of self-figuration and self-fiction will be covered. By comparing and contrasting all these fictional constructions the hope is to arrive at a true typology of the literary characters inspired by Liszt.
And considerations of Liszt as a “reader” are welcome too. The material from his Weimar library depicts him as a scrupulous reader, annotating and commenting on his readings. This material needs to be examined to see what Liszt gleaned from it for his own musical compositions.
It is this triple portrait, then, of Liszt as a writer, character and reader that we look to address in the literary part of the Dijon symposium.
Congress N°3 University of Strasbourg, September 26-27, 2011
Scientific Committee:
- Béatrice Didier (ENS, Paris)
- Françoise Escal (EHESS, Paris)
- Adrienne Kaczmarczyk (Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Center, Budapest)
- Bertrand Ott (Angers)
- Mathieu Schneider (University of Strasbourg)
19TH CENTURY TOPOI AND THE MUSIC OF FRANZ LISZT
Interest in the study of literary and musical topoï has been steadily growing since the 1990s. Several scholarly societies and international research groups are working on developing a methodology based on the presentation of “commonplaces”, either in the sense of “models or repertoires of general arguments” in rhetoric, or of the conventional round of ideas and thoughts within a given time period. The literary and “narrative topos” as a recurring narrative configuration of thematically or formally relevant elements is defined on the website of SATOR (Society of Analysis of the Novelistic Topoi ).
In the field of musicology, the international research group on Musical Signification (see ICMS publications) and American scholars have initiated studies on topics and narratives. According to Leonard Ratner, the musical topics are characteristic figures which can become subjects for musical discourse. In classical music, topics appear as styles or as types. More recently R. Monelle (2006) and K. Agawu (2009) have proposed other definitions of the musical topos.
Research in 19th-century literature and semiotics has already brought to light a great number of topics [topoi] of the Romantic period. In this respect, the SATOR database (www.satorbase.org) and the works of Béatrice Didier are fundamental (1966, 1985, 2006). As to the book of E.R. Curtius (1947, 1956), it is the seminal milestone in the history of topos studies.
In the chapter “Indications” [= Index rerum] of his novel Oberman (1804), Senancour lists the major Romantic themes of his generation : friendship; love; the pastoral world; climate; spleen; Man (“romantic” or that “of society”); ideals; religion; etc.
We see this forthcoming congress – which will focus on Franz Liszt’s ideas and music - as an exceptional opportunity to broaden the scope of an increasingly popular field of research.
References:
K. Agawu : Music as Discourse. Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 2009.
E. R. Curtius, La Littérature européenne et le Moyen Age latin, Paris, PUF, 1956. (in German : 1947).
B. Didier [Béatrice Le Gall], L’Imaginaire chez Senancour, 2 volumes, Paris, José Corti, 1966.
B. Didier, Senancour romancier. Oberman, Aldomen, Isabelle, Paris, Sedes, 1985.
F. Bercegol and B. Didier (éd.), Oberman ou le sublime négatif, (Paris, Editions de l’ENS rue d’Ulm, 2006).
M. Guérin, Nihilisme et modernité. Essai sur la sensibilité des époques modernes de Diderot à Duchamp, Nîmes, Ed. Jacquline Chambon, 2004.
J. Hermann, M. Weill and P. Rodrigez, définitions du topos sur le site SATOR (Société d’Analyse des Topiques romanesques) www.satorbase.org
R. Monelle, The Musical Topic. Hunt, Military, and Pastoral, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2006.
L. Ratner : Classic Music. Expression, Form, and Style, London, Schirmer Books.
E. P. Senancour, Oberman, édition établie, présentée, commentée et annotée par Béatrice Didier, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 1984.
Deadline for submission of paper proposals: (20’ presentation + 10’ discussion): July 1st, 2010. Please send abstract (max. 1500 characters) together with a short Résumé for Strasbourg (CV).
The list of accepted submissions will be released in October 2010.
Papers will be given in: French, English, German
Languages of publication: French and English.
Depending on your chosen theme, please send your submissions to one of the following addresses:
1/ Congress in Rennes: à Laurence Le Diagon - laurence.lediagon[at]wanadoo.fr
2/ Congress in Strasbourg: à Márta Grabócz – grabocz[at]club-internet.fr
3/ Congress in Dijon: florence.fix[at]gmail.com
Papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings.
Deadline for submission of papers for publication: November 1st, 2011. To ensure publication, make sure your full texts reach us before that date.
